What is the greatest commandment in the law? Our Lord answered the legal expert and said “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, thy whole soul and thy whole mind. And the second is like it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The law and the prophets are summed up in these two commandments.” That sounds so simple and yet we must look into the meaning of the heart, the soul and the mind if we are to come to the spiritual light that this answer gives us.
You are to love the Lord with your whole heart. The heart is both a physical organ and a spiritual sense in each one. Hence it will have a physical expression united with a spiritual meaning. One loves with one’s heart when one’s treasure is God in Himself. It is not a question of what God can do for me but what I can do to express my love for Him. So if I say I love Him with my whole heart I find myself detaching myself from persons, places, pleasures and anything that drags my heart to attach itself to something of this world. You were created for Him and your heart will be restless until it rests in Him.
You are to love the Lord with your whole soul. The soul is the spiritual principle which guides the actions of one’s life. One judges this love by perception not by any sensation as in the heart. Our Lady perceived the will of God within her soul and through perception of the Word and not through the inception of a male seed did she give birth to the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. So it is with you and me when we perceive the truth which is revealed by God in Jesus then we change the manner in which we love. Perception is the criterion of the depth of our love for the mystery of the Word made flesh.
Your are to love the Lord with your whole mind. Now the mind in Jesus’ words relates to the intellectual capacity given to each soul. According to our ability to reason the faith becomes a bright light to the intellect and pushes the truth deeply into our growth in the spiritual life. The spiritual life is the life of Grace within the soul. This life is the incarnation of the life of Jesus in us. Through meditation the soul if feed through the intellect to take on the divine life exemplified in our Lord.
Now you are to love your neighbor as yourself. The fruit of our love for God becomes an action of sacrifice for our neighbor. We desire the Truth of God’s salvation uttered in the words and works of Jesus to touch the soul of our neighbor. Error has no right to govern us in any way, shape or form. Error fails to evoke true love for our neighbor. We must remain in the fullness of Truth. For this reason the poor Jew fails because he believes that the one before him is only a man with extraordinary powers.
Jesus asks the question “Whose son is the Christ?” They respond typically that he is David’s son. Then Jesus asks “How is it that David calls him Lord?” This is the expression in Psalm 109. Now the Jew is at a loss. Can the savior be both the “son of David” and David’s Lord? Only the Catholic who lives his faith can answer this Jewish dilemma. The answer of the saints is clear and complete: Jesus as the Word existed before all as St. John presents in the first chapter of his Gospel…”In the beginning was the Word…” Hence Jesus is David’s Lord in the divine nature but Jesus is the “Son of David” when the Word becomes Flesh. This is the mystery of the hypostatic union. The Jew will never come to realize the words of God until they come to the conclusion that this person of Jesus is greater than all others and fulfills every prophetic word written.
This great mystery is protected in the womb of our Sorrowful Mother. She is truly the Mother of God made flesh. Jesus has but one personality, the divine Son of God, but He possesses two natures: one divine and one human. Let us hold onto the truth that sets us free and in the end will conquer the world.
In the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Fr. Voigt
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